Your opinion of George Starostin

Exactly. I have read his Carpenter reviews and there are in fact a lot of references to Richard's role. I don't know if that is exactly what he thinks, but I'd personally agree with an assessment that Richard's arrangements are quite sappy and mushy and it's Karen's singing that breathes life into them.  This comes out even on comparing their versions (er, many of Richard's 'compositions' were simply rearrangements of Paul Williams songs) to that of other artists; often the latter have better arrangements but Karen's singing just makes a much more distinct impression.  And common sense dictates that a singer needs a composer and arranger to put together albums but there's no need to double-triple emphasise the arranger's role and 'distribute credit' evenly between the two because the mark of a great singer is to make mediocre arrangements appealing or at least to make the listener ignore them and focus on the singing.  I had a similar argument with some Dunford fanboy (who was also a Carpenters fan) and given the tone of his (enzando) post, I wonder if it's not the same person.

 

What do you all here think of Piero Scaruffi?  He's a pretty tough critic, favoring mostly experimental records, although he does hold some Prog on a high pedestal (mainly Krautrock and Canterbury.)  He's never given an album a perfect 10/10 and only a handful of others have garnered 9-9.5/10's. The album he considers to be the all-time greatest rock album has always remained Trout Mask Replica, branding it the only rock album of the 20th century worth hearing (which is strange considering the money he must spend on Rock CD's to write all those reviews.  He's extremely influential on the internet, with some user-made lists on Best Ever Albums and Rate Your Music pretty much copying his and arranging it a little bit.  I also think he is the cause of the resurgence of Trout Mask Replica's and other experimental rock bands' popularity.  He's also famous for hating the Beatles and refuting their influence on Pop music.

 

Personally, I think he's a little pretentious, but he does offer some interesting insights that can change the way you view Pop music.  It does annoy me that other than the albums in the 7.5-9.5 range, almost all the others are between 4-6, which puts some phenomenal albums among some real stinkers.  His website is mostly in Italian, though, so for the most part you can only see the ratings unless you know the language.

 

 

ABBA is wonderful.

 

"I really like his reviews, I generally agree with most of them. too bad his site isn't updated anymore (or at least no new band bio's or new albums are added anymore). "

 

 

Not true.  He's doing all of his writing now in a new format linked from the main page.

 

Love how he bashes Uriah Heep

 

yes you sound like one